Only By Moonlight
by sableambiguity
Summary: Reflections on past romances. Zutara, with refs to Kataang & Maiko. Oneshot.


**Only By Moonlight**

* * *

She woke with a start.

It was the same dream. It was always the same dream under the full moon. A hateful glare in wrinkles, Hama's deranged, sinister grin reaching from ear to ear and marring Yue's otherwise beautiful face.

For some reason, she always remembered under that full moon.

Slipping from the sheets she sat there on the edge of the bed, gaze inevitably trailing to the window a few feet away. The curtains weren't drawn; they rarely were. Most nights she didn't even give them a second glance.

But on nights like these, when she could _feel_ the power pulsing through her veins, when that evening and so many others swam through her thoughts, she noticed those curtains and the silvery light they failed to keep out of the room. She saw many more faces than just an old witch's. Many, many more.

The hand at her back only startled her slightly. Those warm fingertips were tender, following her spine as if its bumps were footsteps, climbing higher until a palm could cup the side of her neck and accompany a shift of his figure to meet his mouth to the curve of her shoulder for a kiss.

He knew she was thinking about Aang.

"Come back to bed," he would breathe into her ear, that hand now threaded into her hair as the other encircled her waist to draw her closer. And she would always comply, fluid like the element she felt so keenly, melting into his embrace. He'd blot out her memories with kisses that tasted like something smoky and wild, and a passion that burned her from the inside out...

...on any other night but this one.

Tonight that quiet plea succeeded in pulling her down, into the softness and silk of their bed on her side. She faced him, she met him eagerly when his lips brushed hers, but when his thumb met the curve of her bare hip it wasn't his name she murmured but a gently imploring, "Tell me about Mai."

There was a long pause in everything. Instead of another kiss their breaths were allowed to mingle, the shifting golden of his gaze all the more visible courtesy of the moonlight illuminating the room. "I don't think about her," came in a low rumble, before he resumed the caress of her hip and used it to close some of the remaining distance between them.

An open palm on his chest halted the movement. "I want to know. I've never asked, but I want to know."

The very atmosphere shifted. It was colder. iHe/i was colder. For a fleeting moment she was afraid he'd pull away, retreat behind whatever shield he'd erected long ago to protect his secrets and hide himself away from the world.

But after a long, excruciatingly long moment he was expelling a heavy breath toward the ceiling, rolling onto his back as his arm encompassed her waist to draw her against his side. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything. Anything you'll tell me."

She knew he was struggling. Words had never been his strong suit. More often than not they spoke without them.

After a moment, another sigh preceded a smooth, "She was beautiful." It was matter-of-fact, like stating the sky was blue or the grass was green. "Elegant. Everyone thought she was cold, but it was only because she was so composed. Yet she could be vicious, too." Another beat, and the sentimentality she knew must have been there buried beneath everything else began to lace into the hushed tones, "I always thought of her as a dark swan."

It didn't take much for her to hold her tongue. She'd never known what to expect; somehow what he was sharing was both more and less than what she'd always imagined. Had it been her quiet confession in the shadows about her own past love, she knew it would be much, much less. That realization formed a lump in her throat and only made it easier for her to keep quiet.

"She would have been the perfect Queen," he continued, but this time that sentimentality had turned to something more, and his free hand had found a lock of her hair to lightly twirl between his fingers. "The problem wasn't her, it was me."

"You couldn't have been-"

But he cut her short with a kiss burning into the curve of her lower lip, with hands beginning their inevitable play as they roamed across her back, her sides, before he drew away and one cupped her cheek. "_This_, Katara. I never had _this_ with her. I loved her, I respected her, but that's why I could never have pretended this wasn't what I was missing all along."

Before she could say anything more, he was claiming another kiss, and this time she was melting. Into him, into the affection, returning it with touch and taste and sound as she breathed his name in half of a moan that only seemed to fuel his desire further.

"It was the same for you. With Aang," he hoarsely offered against her throat somewhere between those blistering kisses.

It wasn't a question.

Thus it didn't need an answer, because the way she moved so eagerly against him was reply enough. The arch of her back, the tangle of her hand in his hair, the soft whimpers and moans, the way her gaze seemed even brighter when it was full of kindled passion. Some things just sounded much more beautiful in body language.

* * *

And yet later, much later, as the moon finally dimmed in favor of the coming dawn she dreamt that he held her close, kissed her neck, and in barely even a whisper said, "Marry me," and it wasn't a question either.

But she still said yes.


End file.
